Cheapest Places to Fly From London: What Five Airports' Deals Show

• 1,841

  London observations that pass the feed's rules, 1–31 Oct 2026

• £68

  Median London return deal fare across those observations

• 139

  Destinations with a sensible London deal in October

• 95

  London deals in the member feed on 31 Oct 2026

The cheapest places to fly from London right now

If you live in London and want the cheapest places to fly, the short answer is to start with Stansted and Luton. On 29 scan days between 1 and 31 October 2026, Blame the Fare’s deal scanner logged 1,841 London deal observations that pass the feed’s current trip rules, across 139 destinations. They split into 197 from Heathrow (LHR), 404 from Gatwick (LGW), 445 from Stansted (STN), 450 from Luton (LTN) and 345 from London City (LCY). Southend produced no rows on any of those days, so this guide does not cover it.

Across all five airports the median fare was £68 return, 93% of the observations were nonstop, and the median stay was four nights. That single number hides a lot: Stansted’s median was £40, Luton’s £55, Gatwick’s £69, Heathrow’s £109 and London City’s £159. The airport you choose changes the answer as much as the destination does.

The live picture on 31 October 2026 was similar. The member feed held 95 London deals, 10 from Heathrow, 19 from Gatwick, 22 from Stansted, 23 from Luton and 21 from London City. They ran from £28 (Stansted to Knock, five nights from 15 December) to £487 (Heathrow to Halifax, seven nights from 11 January 2027, one stop), with a median of £61. Of the 95, 87 were nonstop, 81 passed the traveller sense check cleanly and 14 carried flags; none was shorter than three nights. The full list is on the deal feed.

That makes London a strong market for cheap short-haul breaks and winter sun, and a thin one for long-haul deals. It is also a market where the airport you pick decides the price: the cheapest Málaga fares in this data left from Luton and Stansted, while London City’s Málaga median was £159. The cheapest airports to fly from guide explains when a second airport is worth the journey.

Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City compared

The five airports do not sell the same trips. Stansted and Luton are dominated by Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air short-haul, so their median fares are low and almost every observation is nonstop. Heathrow and London City carry more British Airways, Aer Lingus, SWISS and KLM fares, including one-stop trips, so their medians sit much higher.

The nonstop shares explain the gap. Stansted and Luton were entirely nonstop in this data, and Gatwick was 99%. Heathrow and London City each had about one in four logged fares with a connection, which pulls their medians up and makes the cheap end of their lists narrower. That does not make them worse airports; it makes their deal mix different.

It also means a headline London median is less useful than an airport-by-airport one. A £29 Málaga fare from Luton and a £159 Málaga median from London City can both be true in the same month, because they are different products for different travellers. Price the airport you can actually reach before you judge the destination.

London destinations by logged deal fare

“Deals logged” counts how many times the scanner recorded a qualifying fare on that route, roughly once per scan day it appeared. The table shows the 30 routes with the most observations; another 109 routes had between one and 22. A route with one or two sightings is a hint, not a pattern. Medians are rounded to the nearest pound, and “Not recorded” means the feed did not carry an airline name rather than a guess.

Routes with a single observation are left out: Wrocław (£30 from Luton), Budapest (£42 from Stansted), Lyon (£42 from Luton), Almería (£50 from Luton), Kraków (£138 from Heathrow) and the long-haul sightings covered below. They are real fares the scanner found, but one sighting says little about what the route usually costs.

The cheapest city breaks from London

London’s cheap city breaks were concentrated at Stansted and Luton. Of the 139 route medians, 45 were under £50 return and 98 were under £100. Stansted’s Ryanair network supplied the very bottom: Aarhus £30 over 19 sightings, Bremen £30 over 18 and Brno £30 over 10, all nonstop and mostly three-night trips. Rome Ciampino ran £35 over 19 sightings and Bari £39 over 21.

Luton added Milan at £40 over 19 sightings on easyJet and Naples at £40 over 18 on Ryanair, both nonstop. Gatwick’s easyJet base was cheaper on Dubrovnik (£42 over 14), Ljubljana (£69 over 16) and Toulouse (£75 over 19). Porto was £55 across 32 sightings on easyJet and Ryanair, and Barcelona £61 across 35, with 33 of those 35 nonstop. Those two are the best-value bigger-city breaks in the data.

Heathrow’s cheap end is narrower but not empty. Vueling supplied Paris Orly at £60 over 25 sightings and Barcelona at £61 over 25, all nonstop. British Airways supplied Gibraltar at £112 and Tirana at £122, while Cork was £95 to £103 on Aer Lingus from Heathrow. London City is a different proposition: Zürich £133, Luxembourg £111, Madrid £139 and Frankfurt £136, all nonstop, plus Bergerac at £242. You are paying for a small airport close to the City, not for the lowest fare.

For more ideas, our guide to cheap flights to Europe covers the wider short-haul picture and when a shoulder-season week beats a summer one.

Canaries, Morocco and Egypt for winter sun

Winter sun was the most reliable cheap category. The Canaries were almost entirely nonstop from Gatwick, Stansted and Luton: Gran Canaria ran £30 to £49 over 47 sightings with a £37 median, Tenerife £27 to £46 over 41 with a £35 median, Fuerteventura £30 to £43 over 20 with a £34 median, and Lanzarote £29 to £43 over 10 with a £34.50 median. Median stays were five to six nights.

Morocco was close behind. Marrakesh ran £33 to £118 over 31 sightings with a £39 median, and 25 of the 31 were nonstop. Agadir was £37 to £54 over 23, all nonstop, with a £42 median and a median stay of seven nights. Egypt cost more: Sharm El-Sheikh £123 to £148 over 19 with a £134 median over 10 nights, and Hurghada £135 to £157 over 15 with a £149 median over eight nights.

On 31 October the live feed still had Stansted to Lanzarote at £29 for seven nights from 23 November, Stansted to Tenerife at £32 for five nights from 5 December, Gatwick to Fuerteventura at £32 for nine nights from 5 January 2027, and Luton to Marrakesh at £39 for eight nights from 31 December. Those are the kind of trips this data is best at: nonstop, five to nine nights, before bags.

The bag point matters. A £29 Lanzarote fare on Ryanair includes one small personal bag under the seat, not a cabin trolley or a hold bag. Add the bag you will actually take before you compare it with a £60 fare that includes more. Our guide to cheap winter sun from the UK has the seasonal detail.

Greece, Turkey and Croatia: cheap, often at short notice

Greece was cheap but late. Heraklion produced 45 sightings from £68 to £139 with an £81 median, but the median stay was only two nights and the median sighting appeared six days before departure. Corfu ran £52 to £76 over 30 with a £63 median, a two-night median stay and a 12-day lead. Kos was £56 to £125 over 23 with a £60 median and a seven-day lead. These were end-of-season leftovers, not summer peak.

Rhodes was slightly more usable: £56 to £103 over 30, a £73 median and a four-night median stay. Athens ran £52 to £141 over 24 with a £78 median and three to four nights. Zakynthos looked cheap at a £52.50 median over 12 sightings, but the median stay was 11 nights, so check the dates rather than the headline.

Turkey and Croatia followed the same pattern. Antalya was £46 to £71 over 27 with a £53 median and five nights; Dalaman £74 to £115 over 12 with an £88.50 median and three nights. Dubrovnik was the best Croatian value at £30 to £49 over 19, all nonstop, with a £42 median and seven nights. Split ran £59 to £217 over 31 with a £118 median, and 14 of the 31 needed a stop. Pula was £73 to £108 over nine.

If you want a Greek island in 2027, the lesson is to watch from about six weeks out and be flexible on the return. Our guide to cheap weekend flights from the UK explains how the return day changes the price.

Long-haul from London: thin in this data

Long-haul from London was thin in October. The feed logged 17 qualifying observations across 10 routes, and every one was one-stop. Atlanta dominated with eight sightings from £441 to £466 and a £441.50 median, mostly five and six nights on Delta and fares with no airline recorded. One four-night Atlanta sighting at £466 is excluded from this guide’s recommendations because it sits below the five-night floor we apply to long-haul trips.

The rest were singles: Washington Dulles £300 for 10 nights, Los Angeles £304 for 12, San Francisco £324 for eight, Seattle £354 for seven, Chicago £365 for 10, Las Vegas £467 for eight, Halifax £487 for seven, Cape Town £581 for 14 and Charlotte £699 for five. Aer Lingus carried the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington fares, British Airways Seattle, Lufthansa Cape Town and KLM Halifax; the Las Vegas and Charlotte fares had no airline recorded.

No nonstop long-haul deal was logged in the window, so this data says nothing about the price of a nonstop to New York or Dubai. It does say that the cheap long-haul fares the scanner found were connections, and that a five-night stay was the practical minimum. On 31 October the live feed had Heathrow to Halifax at £487 for seven nights from 11 January 2027 on KLM, one stop.

For the nonstop picture, price the route directly rather than relying on deal data. Our guide to booking flights to the USA from the UK covers the booking window.

Which airlines carry the cheap London fares

easyJet carried 603 of the 1,841 London observations and Ryanair 398, so the two low-cost carriers accounted for more than half the data. British Airways carried 227, Vueling 68, Wizz Air 64, Ryanair UK 55, SWISS 50, Jet2 34, KLM 28, Luxair 26, Aer Lingus 25, Air Dolomiti 20, Norwegian 16, ITA 15, Lufthansa 13 and Air Baltic 9. Another 160 observations carried no airline name.

The split by airport is stark. Ryanair and Ryanair UK supplied 396 of Stansted’s 445 observations; easyJet supplied 333 of Gatwick’s 404 and 263 of Luton’s 450. British Airways was the biggest carrier at Heathrow (73) and London City (154). That is why the cheap end of the London market looks like a low-cost map and the premium end looks like a business map.

Bag rules decide whether a cheap fare is really cheap. easyJet says every customer can bring one small under-seat cabin bag of up to 45 by 36 by 20 centimetres and 15 kilograms for free; a larger 56 by 45 by 25 centimetre cabin bag costs extra. Ryanair says every fare includes one small personal bag of 40 by 30 by 20 centimetres under the seat, and its Priority and two-cabin-bags option adds a 10-kilogram bag of 55 by 40 by 20 centimetres. Our guide to cabin bag sizes by airline compares the limits.

Why some cheap London fares never reach the feed

London had far more raw deal observations than the 1,841 counted here. Of 2,280 LHR, LGW, STN, LTN and LCY observations stored in October, 299 failed the traveller sense check, 85 went to destinations without a reviewed photo, 26 were stays too short for the flight time, and 29 were UK domestic hops. The feed hides UK-to-UK fares because a flight to Belfast or Edinburgh is not a holiday deal.

The rules apply when the feed is read, so the numbers in this guide are what a member would actually have been shown, not every fare a search engine returned. The long-haul floor rises with flight time, reaching six nights beyond about nine and a half hours, and this guide applies a stricter five-night floor to long-haul recommendations. That is why the table can look quiet on a route you expect to be cheap.

Getting to each London airport by train, DLR and the Luton DART

All five airports are reachable without a car, but the journeys are not interchangeable. Add the ground fare both ways before you decide that a £10 cheaper flight is actually cheaper.

Heathrow. Heathrow Express runs nonstop to Paddington in 15 minutes, every 15 minutes, with tickets from £10 one way and children 15 and under travelling free. The Elizabeth line reaches Bond Street, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Paddington, Stratford and Tottenham Court Road in under 40 minutes and takes contactless or Oyster. Heathrow calls the Piccadilly line the most budget-friendly option, with journeys to central London under an hour from all terminals.

Gatwick. The station is at the South Terminal, a five-minute walk from departures and arrivals, and the North Terminal connects by a free two-minute shuttle. Gatwick Express runs nonstop to Victoria twice an hour in 30 minutes and offers 10% off when you book online. Southern and Thameslink take 30 to 45 minutes to London, and contactless or Oyster works between Gatwick and London.

Stansted. Stansted Express reaches Liverpool Street in 48 minutes, with trains every 15 minutes during the day and advance tickets from £9.90. Contactless works, but Oyster does not, and travelling without a valid ticket can mean a £100 penalty fare. Our Stansted vs Luton comparison breaks down the route-level differences between the two.

Luton. The Luton DART connects Luton Airport Parkway to the terminal in four minutes, runs 24 hours and costs £4.90 for an adult single if your rail ticket does not include it. The Luton Airport Express takes 22 minutes from St Pancras to Parkway, then four minutes on the DART, with advance fares from £10 that include the connection. Thameslink is cheaper from £6.50 in advance but the DART is extra unless you book to “Luton Airport” rather than Parkway.

London City. The airport is in DLR fare Zone 3, five miles from the City of London. Trains run every four to 10 minutes depending on destination, contactless and mobile pay are accepted, and the DLR is step-free with a lift to the terminal. It is five miles from the City of London, and the fares on this page show that convenience has a price.

How to catch a cheap fare from London

1. Pick the airport first. Stansted and Luton were cheapest for short-haul, Gatwick for the Canaries, Heathrow for Vueling city fares and London City for a fast City commute. Price the airport you can reach.
2. Start with the destination, not the date. Open the deal feed and shortlist places under your price ceiling before you fix a week.
3. Check trip length. Most cheap London fares were four to seven nights; Greek islands were often two-night leftovers, so check the flight times.
4. Add bags and the ground journey. Put the cabin bag, hold bag and train or DART fare on the same line as the ticket, especially on Ryanair and easyJet.
5. Compare on more than one site. Our hub of the best flight search sites shows which to cross-check before paying. If you are west of London, the Bristol guide shows what the same month cost from BRS.

Blame the Fare previews a few current deals publicly on the deal feed. Members see every checked London fare, and you can try the full feed free for 7 days. The Departures Club costs $9 per month or $79 per year; where available, the founding annual price is $49 for the first year, then renews at $79 per year. Eligible new annual members get a 7-day trial with a card required. We do not sell tickets; you book with the airline or agent. See membership prices and terms.